WHY ALAN LICHTMAN’S 13 KEYS WERE WRONG THIS TIME
Alan Lichtman is an American historian who has taught at American University in Washington, D.C. since 1973. Lichtman is best known for creating The Keys to the White House. He developed a way to accurately predict the outcome of the presidential election based on what he calls his 13 keys. He has always been right. Until this election.
When Biden dropped out and Harris entered the race, Lichtman predicted Harris would win the election based on his 13 keys. As the votes came in on election night, he realized he was wrong about his prediction. The reason was that he saw massive underperformance in Democratic strongholds. The Democrats in those places were simply not coming out to vote in the same numbers they had in 2020 for Biden.
The absence of 2020 voters who backed President Biden from the electorate were “the big story” in the Vice President’s loss, according to Lichtman. “If half of them had voted, the outcome would have been totally different.”
“[The Keys are] based on the premise that a pragmatic, rational electorate decides whether or not the White House party deserves four more years or not,” Lichtman says. “But we have shattered the pragmatism and rationality of the electorate this time because of the explosion of misinformation.”
Lichtman heaped blame on Fox News, conservative media outlets, and podcasts for spreading what he calls misinformation, and singled out Elon Musk’s control of X for helping put Trump over the top. The Tesla billionaire, Lichtman says, is putting “his thumb on the scales and vastly disseminating misinformation.”
“We also had this time an explosion that we’ve never seen before of some of the darkest trends in American history – misogyny, racism, xenophobia, antisemitism. And a woman of color was a very convenient target.”
WOMEN LESS TRUSTED TO BE IN LEADERSHIP ROLES: As a woman, Harris’ candidacy may have been doomed
The Reykjavík Index for Leadership measures how people feel about women in power. It measures the perceived legitimacy of male and female leadership in politics and across twenty professions, as well as how men and women differ in their views, and the extent to which men and women are viewed equally in terms of suitability of individuals for positions of power.
The Index evaluates the G7 group of nations and 20 different industries and public professions, surveying the attitudes of more than 10,000 people.
CNN also reports that while Harris won a majority of female voters, her 8 point advantage over Trump was about half as big as Joe Biden’s 15 point lead in 2020. “Trump regained ground among women this year largely because so many of them were dissatisfied with the results produced by his successor, Biden.” You have to wonder if lack of trust in Harris could have been connected to the fact that she is a woman.
DARK MONEY CAMPAIGN GOT DEMS TO STAY HOME
Kamala Harris had 9 million fewer “reliable” Democratic votes than Joe Biden. Too many Democrats just stayed home instead of voting for her. Why did that happen? That large discrepancy in base voting was fostered by a 45 million dollar dark money campaign funded by Elon Musk. The micro-targeted ads conveyed a wide array of disinformation about Kamala Harris.
Muslims in Michigan began seeing pro-Israel ads this fall praising Vice President Kamala Harris for marrying a Jewish man and backing the Jewish state. Jews in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, saw ads from the same group with the opposite message: Harris wanted to stop U.S. arms shipments to Israel.
Another group promoted “Kamala’s bold progressive agenda” to conservative-leaning persuadable voters, while a third filled the phones of young liberals with videos about how Harris had abandoned the progressive dream. Black voters in North Carolina were told Democrats wanted to take away their menthol cigarettes, while working-class White men in the Midwest were warned that Harris would support quotas for minorities and deny them Zyn nicotine pouches.
What voters had no way of knowing at the time was that all of the ads were part of a single, $45 million effort created by political advisers to Tesla founder Elon Musk. [Washington Post]
THIS WAS A JIM CROW ELECTION ON STEROIDS Also Funded by the Rich Guys Club
Republicans engaged in voter suppression on steroids in this election. Check out Mark Thompson Show on You Tube and scroll down to his interview of Greg Palast, an investigative journalist who writes for BBC and The Guardian. A group called “True the Vote” which is funded by the right wing Bradley Foundation, spent 2 billion dollars to get people to challenge voters of color in Wisconsin and Georgia before this election, knocking them off of the voter rolls.
A huge number of voters were thrown off the voter rolls base on the say so of these self-appointed vigilantes who, by law, can challenge voters without the voters being informed that they are being challenged. Millions of voters in Georgia alone were thrown out. Even if these voters asked for a provisional ballot, if their names were no longer on the voter rolls, their provisional ballots did not count. Check out Vigilantes, Inc, a film about what happened.
Ultra rightwing billionaires threw millions of dollars at this effort to get Trump elected by suppressing the vote of likely Democratic voters, Black voters, in Georgia and other swing states.
WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO US?
Thom Hartmann writes: “We just watched the final fulfillment of a 50 year plan. Louis Powell laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have followed it. It was a plan to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations. It was a plan to replace democracy with oligarchy. A large handful of America’s richest people invested billions in this plan, and its tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions. More will soon come to them. “Trump Win Fulfills Oligarchy’s 50-Year Plan for Right-Wing Takeover. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-oligarchy-wins
We got here in part because of the loss of the American Dream for working Americans. American voters kept telling pollsters that they were unhappy. When Americans said they cared about the economy that really meant they wanted to be able to reclaim the American Dream of upward mobility. When they talked about the border, that meant they wanted to feel safer. Biden failed to effectively address these concerns with empathy and a clear explanation about how the Democrats had heard them and were working hard to fix these problems. Biden came off as too dismissive, telling working Americans that his policies writ large had saved the country from recession. He defended himself and what he had done to help Americans even if THEY didn’t feel it.
This widespread sense of malaise worked to Trump’s advantage. Working Americans believed that Biden and the Democrats were the “out-of-touch elites” who were keeping them from getting ahead and Trump was the one that had heard them and would help them out. When Harris said she could not think of anything she would do differently from Biden she took on Biden’s baggage and confirmed that she was another “out-of-touch elite”. Trump was able to brand himself as the candidate of change who would magically “fix it”.
The real elites who have contributed to the difficulty of Americans to get ahead are the dark money billionaires, who have engaged in a 50 year project to make our country into an oligarchy. They just won this election by supporting Trump, their Trojan Horse. Trump will now try to turn this country that is an oligarchy into an autocracy with himself totally in charge and everyone afraid of him.
TRUMP’S END GAME? Wreck Our Government and Get Retribution
Now that the Democrats have conceded the presidential election, Trump is announcing his cabinet. When it comes to the agencies that Trump and the billionaires club are determined to deconstruct, or that Trump is going to use to terrorize people who diss him, Trump is setting his sights on ardent loyalists.
He wants bomb throwers and wreckers in positions of power in his cabinet not to run agencies but to ruin them, not to lead but to destroy what they are put in charge of. And he is serious when he says he is out for retribution.
A successful, well functioning government is based on thoughtful decision making in reliance on facts, knowledge, science, data, planning and skillful execution. Trump is not interested in that. He wants loyalists to run certain government agencies who are the opposite of trustworthy experts capable of skillful independent decision making and execution.
He announced a Fox News host as his Secretary of Defense, a Putin apologist as his Director of National Intelligence, a vaccine skeptic to head Health and Human Services and an accused pedophile to be the Attorney General. (Marc Elias Democracy Docket)
Trump is planning to give a bunch of butchers a lot of sharp axes and turn them loose on key government agencies. All of that is part of the plan to deconstruct our democracy and government and move the country from an oligarchy (which it is now- the rich guys run it) to an autocracy (dictatorship with Trump in charge until he dies).
The very clear goal of the butchers will be to destroy regulations that make it hard for billionaires to grow their massive companies even larger. Many of those regulations are there to protect Americans from harm: policies to protect us from the ravages of climate change, gun violence, manufacturing short cuts that aren’t safe, help us with social support networks and protect us against the next pandemic.
Disruption and chaos are coming. Trump and Musk don’t care as long as the country generates greater wealth for the billionaires club. If Trump is successful, the American people will become weaker, poorer, and sicker while the rich will get richer.
WILL THE SENATE CAVE TO TRUMP?
Currently, Trump is testing his power over John Thune, the new Senate leader (who took over for Mitch McConnell) and other Republicans in the Senate by pressuring them to give him the appointees he wants even if they are corrupt, sex offenders or incompetent. Trump wants recess appointments so he can get these people into power without exposing their incompetence to the American people. We will see if John Thune gives away one of the most important powers of Congress, the power of advise and consent that protects us from the sorts of people Trump wants to appoint.
WHAT WE CAN DO
Hartman writes “This is not the end…hitting bottom often begins the process of renewal.”
Remember the first Star Wars movie?
The Imperial Forces led by Darth Vader (Donald Trump and his dark forces including Steve Bannon, Steven Miller, Elon Musk, the Uhleins, Peter Thiel, the Bradley Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Liberty Moms and the billionaires club) hold Princess Leia captive (the Democratic Party and their pro-democracy freedom loving allies). The Imperial Forces are pretending to be the force for freedom and good. They are trying to quell the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon, work together with the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the princess, help the Rebel Alliance, and restore freedom and justice to the Galaxy.
That’s where we are right now. We need our version of the Rebel Alliance, to gather and resist the dark forces that are trying to take over the country.
Democrats in Congress must get tougher and more pro-active. We need fighters in congress who are not afraid to speak out about what’s going on. They should expose the billionaire club and talk about their plan to plunder America- predict it so that people understand what’s coming. They should work with Republicans where they can to help the American people, but stand up against the crazy that’s on the way.
A robust pro-democracy movement has sprouted up in America in response to Trump’s first election win in 2016. It consists of thousands of concerned, capable people who decided to run for office, and hundreds of pro-democracy groups that were activated. These groups are populated by Americans who are well-informed, deeply concerned about our country and understand that the real threat is from dark money and billionaires.
Groups in the pro-democracy space could learn from the Republicans’ 50 year plan. Democrats will need to go back to local elections and work on flipping state houses red to blue across the country and in every district all the way from dog catcher to school board and library board members and beyond. When asked what policies they want, working Americans choose what Democrats are trying to do for our country not what the Republicans are trying to do to our country, but they don’t link those policies to the Democratic Party. Democrats must reengage with blue collar Americans by listening and empathizing not denigrating and scolding.
THE WAY FORWARD
First things first. Americans need to realize they voted for the wrong guy. They were betrayed.
That might start to happen pretty fast when Trump takes over and stocks his cabinet with the incompetent, crazy, TV personalities he is choosing. These Trump tools will cut back programs Americans rely on like Medicaid and food stamps to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy; slap tariffs on imports, which will raise the cost of those goods; round up not only immigrants who commit crimes, but immigrants whose “crime” was crossing the border illegally and staying and working here, contributing to the success of our country, and paying taxes for decades with no path to citizenship; separate children from their families and put them in interment camps; try to court martial generals who made Trump mad; try to indict people like Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney and others Trump wants to punish for trying to hold him accountable.
This administration will be a very ugly chapter in our history. Americans are not going to like it. Many will start saying they didn’t vote for this and that they thought Trump was just kidding about these things. No. He meant what he said.
Just Remember: “This is not the end…hitting bottom often begins the process of renewal.”
